


2. Ghosts

by Amorette



Series: Ten Things That Never Happened to Willie Loomis [2]
Category: Dark Shadows - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 14:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amorette/pseuds/Amorette
Summary: An alternative to what happened when Willie went to warn Maggie.





	2. Ghosts

TEN THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO WILLIE LOOMIS  
2\. GHOSTS

I had to warn her. No matter what Barnabas did to me. He could flay me alive—and probably would—but I was still going to tell Maggie what really happened to her. I had to make sure that Barnabas Collins and his insane obsession with his long dead girlfriend didn’t hurt Maggie again.  


I was fairly sure Maggie’s bedroom was around the back of the Evan’s cottage, the room with the French doors. It was late, after midnight, and no one should be around as I crept closer, hoping against hope that Barnabas was somehow occupied and wouldn’t sense my impending betrayal.  


Then it all went wrong. Not because of Barnabas, though. Bright lights suddenly lit up the side yard and voice called out and I turned to run and then everything exploded in agony. I felt myself land face down on the wet grass as fire spread throughout my body. I could hear more voices shouting but they faded to silence as the world went black.  


The next thing I knew, I was standing in a room that seemed to be filled with fog, yet I was definitely inside. I would see the walls, the chairs and lamps and the sofa with an afghan tossed across the back. The fog faded and everything came into sharper focus. I turned and saw the easel and knew I was in Sam Evan’s sitting room but I had no idea how I got there. Last thing I remembered I was falling down.  


I looked down at myself to see if I were injured in any way and then I knew what had happened.  


The front of my shirt and down my trousers were covered in blood. I could even see torn flesh protruding through the fabric of my shirt and knew I was looking at exit wounds. I could also see through my blood stained clothing to the plaid carpet I was standing on.  


Oh, shit.  


I heard a scream and a gasp and looked up in time to see Sam Evens entering through the front door, Maggie at his side. 

She saw me and slumped sideways in a dead faint. Sam staggered and dropped her on the couch to stare, open-mouthed, at me.  


At my ghost.  


“Don’t be afraid,” I heard myself say. Now that was a pretty stupid thing to say since I was ghost covered in blood but I hadn’t really had time to think about it. “I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m here to warn Maggie.”  


Sam seemed to be at a loss for words. He mouth flapped a few times but before anything came out, one of the local deputies stepped through the door and said, “It was Loomis all right and he’s dead as a . . .”  


And then the deputy caught sight of me. I shrugged. He fainted, hitting the floor hard.  


Sam glanced down at the deputy, then sat heavily on the couch next to his daughter, who was starting to stir.  


“So, Willie Loomis.” Evan said it as calmly as he could manage, which was not bad, considering. “I just saw what appeared your dead body in my back yard.”  


“Sorry about that.”  


“I take it you aren’t quite ready to move on, though.”  


“Apparently not.” I tried to take a deep breath but realized that was a waste of time. Even if I wasn’t dead, I was pretty sure my lungs had been so badly damaged by whatever the deputy shot me with that they wouldn’t have worked anyway.  


“Willie?” It was Maggie, sitting up and clutching at her father, her face as pale as it had been when Barnabas has been draining her of her blood regularly. “Willie?” Her voice was a little stronger.  


“Yeah, listen, I know this is not . . . what I planned but. . . I had to t-tell you. W-warn you. About Barnabas.”  


Sam narrowed his eyes. “Barnabas Collins?”  


“I know, he’s a Collins. He’s untouchable. But he is not what he seems. The man in the painting at Collinwood is the same man whose portrait you are painting. He’s a vampire and he’s old and he’s c-crazy.”  


In spite of being faced with what was obviously a supernatural phenomena—namely me—he made a disgusted sound. 

“Vampire? Really?”  


“Only wants his portrait painted at night, remember?”  


Sam frowned at that. It was an odd request.  


Maggie sat up straighter and laid one hand on her father’s arm. “I remember. I remember now. Pop, it was Barnabas who kidnapped me. He was. . .what was he doing?”  


“You look kind of like his old girlfriend who threw herself off Widow’s Hill back a hundred and fifty years ago when she found out what he was. Wait. Let me back up. I . . .I’ll start at the beginning.”  


I was aware that I was pacing back and forth but, fortunately for the Evan’s plaid carpet, the blood that was dripping from my ghostly body turned silver and vanished before it hit the floor.”  


“I made a terrible mistake. I tried to rob the grave of one of the Collins’ ancestors because I thought there were jewels in it. But Barnabas was in it. Trapped in a chained-up coffin in a hidden room in the mausoleum at Eagle Hill Cemetery. I saw the chains and figured someone was protecting something valuable.” I ran my hand back through my hair in a nervous habit I seemed to have kept even after dying. “He’s been stuck in there, by his father, because he was a vampire. Barnabas, not his father. Some crazy lady put a curse on Barnabas because he wanted to marry Josette, not the crazy lady. The crazy lady was a witch and she made him into a vampire and then his father chained him in the coffin.”  


“This is the most. . .” Sam didn’t manage to finish the rest of the sentence out because Maggie, clutching at his arm, suddenly said, “The music box. It belonged to Josette.”  


“Yeah. And somehow, he used it to hypnotize you. To try to make you believe you were Josette. He dressed you up in her clothes, even.”  


One of Maggie’s hands reached out and stroked down her hair. I knew she was remembering Josette’s veil.  


“He kept me in her room. He kept telling me I was. . .was Josette. And he loved me.” Her voice caught. “He really did love her.”  


“Yeah, I guess,” I said, “but that didn’t give him the right to try to make you into her!”  


“No. And it didn’t work. And Barnabas got very angry.”  


“He’s got a nasty temper.” I said. “Beat the crap out of me with that damned cane of his more than once.”  


Sam spoke up. “So you came here, risked your life, to warn Maggie, to help her remember.”  


I shrugged. “Yeah. You do remember, don’t you, Maggie? That Barnabas is a vampire and a dangerous crazy one at that.”  


She nodded. Her gaze was distant, as if she were remembering Josette’s room, or the cell in the basement. “I remember.”  


“I had to help him. I was under his power and I wasn’t strong enough to resist.” I sniffled. Apparently, ghosts could cry. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. I tried to help but I couldn’t.”  


“You did help, Loomis.” Sam looked angry and sad at the same time “You died and came back from the dead to help her.”  


At that moment, a hand came up over the back of the sofa and the deputy pulled himself up to look at me. I thought he was going to faint again, but instead, he leapt up and ran outside, yelling for Sheriff Patterson.  


“Oh, Willie.” Maggie reached out a hand, tears streaking her face, “I knew you wanted to help. And now this. . .I am sorry.”  


I shrugged again. “Don’t be. I deserve this. I’m a rotten person.”  


“No, Willie.” Maggie actually stood up and took a step towards me, even though Sam kept hold of her arm. “You sacrificed yourself to save me.”  


I smiled. She smiled back. Pity she never looked at me like while I was alive. I could feel the fog creeping back into the room, but I knew I had to tell her something else.  


“Don’t trust Julia Hoffman! She’s got the hots for Barnabas and she has helped him and is trying to cure him with a vampire vaccine or something. She’s really a doctor at an insane asylum and she should be a patient there. You have to drive a stake through his heart while he is sleeping in the cellar in his casket during the day! Got that! She’ll try to stop you but you have to do it. So he won’t try again.”  


The fog was getting thicker. I could see that Sheriff Patterson and a couple of other people had crowded into the Evan’s sitting room to stare at me.  


“One more thing.” I was shouting now to be heard as the fog swirled around me. “Barnabas murdered Jason McGuire and I buried him in the secret room in the mausoleum. Could you bury me next to him? Ask Mrs. Stoddard. I don’t think she’d care. I don’t need a funeral or a coffin or anything. Just stick me next to Jason. Please.”  


Then everything swirled away into the black.  


I was standing up when I opened by my eyes, which I thought was odd. Usually, if your eyes are closed, you are lying down because you are asleep or unconscious or. . .dead.  


I was standing at the peak of Widow’s Hill, watching the very first rays of the sun as it began it’s morning journey. The sky behind me was still sprinkled with stars, but the horizon was was fading to pink.  


I looked down. I was still in torn clothes covered in blood but the color had all faded and now I was just silver and I could see through me. I was glad I could see all the way through and wasn’t just looking at my underwear or something, because I’m pretty sure it would have been bad shape after what happened to me.  


“Well, boy-o,” said a familiar voice at my side. “Just what did you do?”  


I turned and when I saw Jason, I felt my face break into a grin and I hugged him. He was silver and as see-through as I was, but I would still feel him and his arms hugging me back.  


“I got killed,” I said. Which was pretty obvious.  


Jason laughed. “I can tell.”  


“I was warning this pretty girl, Maggie Evans, remember her?” Jason nodded. “I was warning her about Barnabas Collins. The sheriff and his deputies were waiting for me.”  


“Oh. Too bad.”  


I shrugged.  


“Willie?”  


I wasn’t expecting the second voice. Well, I really hadn’t been expecting Jason’s but it didn’t take me completely by surprise. The second voice did. I spun around and saw Barnabas standing there.  


Only it wasn’t the Barnabas I knew. It was the one who was cursed and died so long ago. No, it was the Barnabas he was before all that happened. He was wearing some kind fancy coat and tie and tight trousers, nothing like the way he dressed around me. It was the costume he wore only now it wasn’t a costume. It was just back to being his clothes.  


“I wanted to thank you,” said Barnabas, smiling, as I had never seen him smile when we were both alive. “You freed me. You saved me as much as you saved Maggie.”  


I noticed his arm was bent oddly and I saw why. A pretty woman with long dark hair, in a long white dress and veil, was holding his arm, leaning affectionately against him.  


“You’re Josette,” I said. Which was pretty obvious but I said it anyway. She dimpled a smile at me. There was a resemblance between Josette and Maggie in looks, but Josette was demure lady of her time and Maggie was a bold one of hers, and I could have told them apart instantly, even if they had been standing side by side and dressed alike.  


“I am.” She stepped forward and put her ghostly lips to my equally ghostly cheek. “Thank you. Barnabas and I are free and together.”  


Barnabas reached and shook my hand, his handshake firm and strong even though he was ectoplasm or whatever he was. And I was, too, I guess. “You saved me from myself, Willie, I am eternally grateful.”  


“Barnabas!” The next voice to surprise me was a child’s. A little girl who came skipping up to take Barnabas’ hand as it dropped to his side.  


“You remember Sarah,” said Barnabas, as if he were quite accustomed to introducing one ghost to another.  


I nodded and smiled. She curtsied and smiled back, then started tugging at her older brother’s hand. I looked up and saw the Old House. Only not as I knew it, as they had known it. Bright and shining white, the windows twinkling in the first rays of the sun, the shrubbery cut back so you could appreciate what a fine house it was.  


“I should have cut back the bushes,” I said, even though Barnabas, Josette and Sarah were fading away as they walked towards the house, which was slowly turning back to its current bedraggled appearance.  


“So you’re the gardener, now, are you?” said Jason.  


“I don’t know what I am. I’m dead. I’m a ghost. I don’t really feel like haunting anyone, though.”  


Jason put his arm around my shoulders. “I know exactly how you feel. I don’t want to haunt anyone but I don’t really want to go anywhere. It’s obvious those miserable old Sisters at St. Joseph’s Parochial School didn’t know anything about the afterlife, but I’d rather stay here than wander someplace . . .unpleasant.”  


“Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’ve always like watching the sun rise over the sea.” There were purples and blues and yellows starting to color the pink of the clouds. “I think I’ll just stand admire it for now.”  


And I did.

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down and wrote this in a hour so don't expect much. And I have had two more ideas so it may become 12 things that never happened to Willie Loomis.  
> ETA: Did a quick proofread so there should be fewer mistakes.


End file.
